Ye Viols!

We Say...

Review by Mark Richardson

Jan St. Werner's interests when working solo as Lithops range from playful electro-pop miniatures, not far from his more accessible work as Mouse on Mars, to harsh and dense soundscapes fit for only the hardiest explorers of out-there sound. So while certain elements remain consistent — a focus on glitches and distortion, elastic structures that toy with the limitations of sequencing, richly textured programming — individual releases remain variable. In general, the easiest entry points for the uninitiated are the albums that collect tracks created for other purposes such as 7" or 12" singles or compilations. Where the standalone albums Scrypt and Mound Magnet are often daunting in their unrelenting abstraction (though both are certainly rewarding if you put in the time and focus), Uni Umit and Queries are looser, more pop-friendly, and easier to immediately grasp for a few tracks at a time.

St. Werner's latest Lithops album, Ye Viols!, is another collection of stray tracks, but this time consisting of work created for the world of high art — sound installations, contemporary dance pieces and experimental films. As such, it splits the difference between the two kinds of Lithops albums and serves as an excellent bridge to St. Werner's more challenging work. Perhaps due to their initially functional nature, tracks tend to explore an idea or two before moving on without getting bogged down in strange tangents. A few buoyant pieces with relatively steady beats and something approaching song structure ("sebquenz," "handed," "graf") bump up against more subtly atmospheric tracks with an industrial flavor that display St. Werner's uncanny ability to evoke a strange new world through sound ("bacchus," "induchtech," "in nitro"). While droning blasts of noise like "wammo" and "21. Jhrdt" are more difficult and will remind some of, say, Autechre at their most abrasive, in the context of Ye Viols! they serve to mark one boundary of St. Werner's singular and coherent aesthetic.